Teaching writing in theory and practice

Teaching Writing in Theory and 

Practice 

A Study of Ways of Working with Writing in the 9th Grade 

Emelie Ahlsén and Nathalie Lundh 

Abstract 

The main purpose of this study is to take a closer look at how teachers work with 

writing and to examine some theories on the teaching of writing. Five teachers in two 

schools are included in order to get an insight in teachers’ practical work with EFL 

writing. This has been done through classroom observations and interviews. The results 

show that all teachers seem to use aspects from several theories. The results also show 

that the teachers’ level of awareness of theories on teaching writing varies. 

Keywords 

Compulsory school, EFL (English as a Foreign Language), Genre Writing, Process 

Writing Writing assignments, Writing theory

Teaching Writing

“A simplistic view of writing would assume that written language is simply the graphic 

representation of spoken language…” (Brown, 2001:335). Writing is more complex 

than this; hence writing pedagogy is important, as Brown states by claiming that writing 

is “as different from speaking as swimming is from walking” (2001:335). 

This is supported and developed by Hedge, who states that writing is more than 

producing accurate and complete sentences and phrases. She states that writing is about 

guiding students to: “produce whole pieces of communication, to link and develop 

information, ideas, or arguments for a particular reader or a group of readers…” 

(2005:10). Therefore effective writing requires several things: a high degree of 

organization regarding the development and structuring of ideas, information and 

arguments. Furthermore, Hedge mentions features such as: a high degree of accuracy, 

complex grammar devices, a careful choice of vocabulary and sentence structures in 

order to create style, tone and information appropriate for the readers of one’s written 

text (2005:7). All these points make the teaching of writing a complex matter, since all 

this should be taken into consideration for efficient learning of writing strategies. 

Cushing Weigle looks at the writing ability from several perspectives. For instance, she 

views it as a social and cultural phenomenon and as a cognitive activity (2002:14). 

These two aspects are briefly presented below.

Theory: Interviews 

McDonough and McDonough write that “interviewing is a very basic research tool in 

social science” (1997:182) and explains further that there are different kinds of 

interviews to use in research; structured, semi-structured and unstructured. Cohen, 

Manion and Morrison present a different categorization, using Patton’s (1980) interview 

types: Informal Conversational Interview, Interview Guide Approach, Standardized 

Open-ended Interviews and Closed Qualitative Interviews. (2007: 235) 

The semi-structured interview allows for more flexibility than the structured one, but is 

easier to analyse than the unstructured interview. Therefore the semi-structured 

interview is our chosen method. Furthermore, using the terminology of Patton (1980; 

see above), this method is a mix of the Interview Guide Approach and the Standardized 

Open-ended Interviews. The questions in our interviews were designed and structured 

in advance although there was room for follow-up questions depending on the 

interviewee’s answers (appendix 3).

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Eva (Appendix 5)

6.2.1 Observation 

Eva started the lesson by a short introduction of the writing assignment. She asked the 

students to write a presentation of an organisation, and gave an example by referring to 

a page in the students’ textbooks (Wings) about Greenpeace. There, the students were 

able to read a presentation and were given some guidelines of what to think about when 

writing such a text. It seemed as if it was an assignment of writing a factual text. After 

this, the students were asked to begin writing. They were free to choose whether they 

wanted to work by themselves or in small groups. The time limit was three forty-minute 

lessons. During the rest of the observed lesson Eva circulated in the class to make sure 

that all students had chosen a topic. At some points students asked for help with 

vocabulary, and every time Eva stated that the most important thing was that they 

should use English expressions, not just translate Swedish ones word by word. One 

group asked if they could interpret some lyrics instead of doing the given assignment. 

They wanted to do it orally. Eva agreed to this and explained this to the observer by 

referring to her teaching philosophy; encourage the students’ creativity and their own 

ideas at all times. The assignment originally given did not seem to matter anymore. 

6.2.2 Interview

Many times throughout the interview Eva comes back to what she finds to be the most 

important thing when it comes to teaching writing; she wants her students to find the 

fun in writing and she strives to stimulate their imagination through her assignments. 

She believes that writing in the 9th grade should be free and that the most important 

thing for the students is to learn how to use their best English, with as few Swedish 

expressions as possible. Eva mentions that she presents writing assignments by giving 

the students short instructions for each assignment. She writes them down on the white-

board and gives examples from the textbook. She explains that she does not want to 

give too many instructions because then the students might focus too much on what the 

purpose is. To Eva the most important thing in teaching writing is that the students find 

the ‘flow’ in their writing. The structure and the grammar come later, according to Eva. 

The actual writing assignments that Eva uses are varied: essays, retelling stories, 

descriptions and presentations are some of the activities that she mentions. She wants 

the assignment to have a multiple purpose; on the one hand it should give the students 

the opportunity to practice their grammar and vocabulary, and on the other hand it 

should give opportunities to self-reflection and self-awareness. Whatever the 

assignment is, Eva believes that it is important to present it within some kind of a 

context. Sometimes she shows a film, and other times the class reads a text before 

starting the writing, in order to create understanding for the assignment among the 

students. 

When asked about theories, Eva makes it clear that she does not believe much in 

theories. She mentions that she has heard of process writing, but that she would not like 

to use it herself. She has not heard of genre writing before, and when the interviewer 

explains the theory to her, she says that she might use it if she was to teach English at 

Upper Secondary School and that she feels that it will be too early to introduce it in 9th

grade. She comes back to her earlier claim that writing should be free and adds that one 

should not provide students with too narrow frames in writing assignments. She 

believes in the students’ inner strength and creativity rather than sticking to frameworks 

and reproducing sample texts. Eva says that all assignments are good for the students, as 

long as they have fun.